Refreshing insightful discussion- Unwoke - Douglas Murray and Titania McGrath

I’m also relieved I’m not the only one blaming academics, I got told off for that here.

I’ve just today looked up the band MUNA as I listen to them a bit and apparently they’re alt-pop as well as woke and queer.

I’m convinced there’s a huge number of people taking the piss. Note to self - don’t bother googling bands!

While I agree that transgender ideology primarily benefits wealthy white males and has been spearheaded by such individuals, I'm not sure how useful or noble other types of indentity politics are in the long-term. It seems to divide people into simplistic, homogenous categories on some imaginary totem pole of who is most oppressed.

Thanks for this OP

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to laugh about this stuff but this has helped restore my sense of humour

I also want to give them both a big hug and I feel like they won’t mind me saying that!

I think they both have a blind spot.

I think trans ideology is a backlash against woke trends.

Trans ideology lends itself to wealthy white males claiming worse oppression than any other demographic.

White men have had a tough time the last 15 years, by being blamed, as a demographic, for largely all oppression going.

Trans ideology is not so much an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ response, as it is an ’if you can’t beat them take them over and hitch a ride off the backs of oppressed peoples’ liberation struggles’ response.

They talk a lot of sense against purity politics and shutting down difficult conversations, but they have missed the obvious, that trans ideology mostly benefits white affluent men, and differs from any other identity politics, in that it was pushed from the beginning by some of the richest, most powerful people in the world.

Trans ideology can be seen as the powerful using the narratives and ways of speaking of the moment and bending it to their own advantage.

There is a danger, that the growing anti-woke sentiments may help usher in a new era where we cannot talk about any structures of oppression at all.

Having said that, they are starting a very important debate that we do, as a society, need to have.

There's a really startling observation in the comments that I can't believe hasn't been noticed before: parallels between "woke" and "erwache" in Nazi Germany.

Thanks for posting....

That first chap made a great point:-
nowhere else in society do we take the threat of suicide as a carte blanche for the person to get their own way.

AND,
they mentioned the impact on other children .. if they see one of their schoolmates change from boy to girl or vice versa, that must raise a worry in their minds i.e. "what if that happened to me?"

Oh yeah.... I watched this the other night and completely forgot to respond to this thread.
It was quite a good conversation between them and also the questions from the audience.

I have subscribed to the Battle of Ideas newsletter for a while now. It's good to see there are still some avenues where people can debate and discuss and critique ideas and current issues.

This was really good. Thank you for posting it.

At around 47 minutes there is an audience question from a primary school teacher. Will cross reference this to the ROGD support thread.